Morning in the Wizarding World
by Rosepixie
Summary: A series of very short stories about characters from the Harry Potter books in the morning. There is very little plot, but it is safe to assume that the stories all take place on the same morning, so small connections may become evident. I have no current plans to expand any of these into longer stories, but may continue to add more of them over time.
1. Ron Weasley

Ron stomped around his bedroom getting dressed. He hadn't slept well in over a week, ever since they fought and she left. For the first few days he had honestly believed that he was better off without her, but then he had started to miss her. Little things at first - the way she pushed her hair behind her ear when it fell into her face, the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. It only got worse after that. The memory of her smile haunted him and his arms ached to hold her.

The problem was that Hermione was smart. Crazy, insanely smart. If she didn't want to be found, then she wouldn't be. She had perfected cloaking while they were traipsing around the countryside looking for horcruxes and it seemed like she wasn't shy about using those skills to hide from him now.

Something was different this morning, though. He could feel it. Grabbing his wand from the nightstand, Ron stalked to his window.

"_Locare_," he grumbled with a sharp flick of his wand. The spell hadn't been working all week, so he was surprised when the air shimmered and an arrow pointed north. So surprised that he almost fell over in shock.

Ron whirled around and stormed out of the room and down the winding staircase of the Barrow. He startled his mother as he burst into the kitchen where she was preparing breakfast.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

Molly sighed. Every day for almost two weeks he had asked this question and every day she had answered, but Hermione had cast a spell so that Ron always heard something else. Even writing it had not gotten around the young witch's magic.

"She has been staying with Harry at Grimmauld Place," she said resignedly.

Ron looked stunned. And then he apparated away without a word. Molly sighed again. She knew that he would only find Hermione when she was good and ready to be found. She hoped that would be soon.


	2. Harry Potter

Harry blearily opened his eyes and looked cautiously around the room. It took him a moment to recognize the place. It was probably the smell that made it click first. Despite a good scrubbing, a great deal of laundry, and every cleaning charm Hermione could remember, the room still smelled like something had died in the corner ten years ago and only been discovered recently.

He had only been living in Grimmauld Place for a couple of weeks and was still in the process of turning it into somewhere he actually _wanted_ to live. Hermione had stayed with him for the past week after some kind of falling out with Ron. Harry hadn't asked for details and neither Hermione nor Ron had offered any. He wasn't even sure that Ron knew she had been staying at Grimmauld Place with him.

Regardless, she had left yesterday for Hogwarts and Harry finally had his house to himself. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the only one who knew that. Harry closed his eyes as he realized that what had woken him up was a very loud pounding from the front door that echoed through the cavernous old house.

"Harry!"

Wow. Ron's voice _really_ carried. Harry pulled the covers up over his head with a groan. It was too early for drama of the angry-boyfriend variety. He had just saved the world and this was his well-deserved holiday away from everything. Didn't Ron understand that drama was supposed to wait until after that holiday? Hermione had courteously kept the drama more or less out of his hair, even while living in his house. Why couldn't Ron do the same?

"Harry James Potter!" Ron shouted. "I know you were hiding her here! Why didn't you tell me she was here?"

Harry gave up and hauled himself out of bed in order to go downstairs and attempt to calm his irate friend.

"He couldn't have at least had the courtesy wait until after I'd had some coffee?" he muttered as he slid his glasses up his nose.


	3. Hermione Granger

The first thing that Hermione noticed was that she was extremely comfortable. After months of sleeping on the surprisingly uncomfortable bed in the wizard tent, sleeping in a soft proper bed with plenty of space to stretch was still a bit of a novelty. She smiled, but kept her eyes closed as she languidly stretched. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at the cozy, familiar red and gold curtains around her bed.

Even though she had never slept in this particular bed before, it was as familiar as home. All of the beds in Gryffindor Tower had the same deep red quilts and heavy red curtains. She was determined to properly finish her education, even though everyone seemed certain that it was entirely unnecessary.

Ron had thrown a fit when she announced that she would be spending the summer at Hogwarts doing the seventh year curriculum. He actually went so far as to say that he forbid her from going. Not one to be forbidden from anything, she had walked out on him. Harry had let her stay with him at Grimmauld Place. She had let Molly know where she was, but she had also made it difficult for Ron to find her. Hermione and Ron had not spoken since the fight. She felt that looming over her and knew that she would have to deal with it sometime.

But not today. Today she had work to do. She had to go down and meet Professor McGonegall for breakfast. Then she would get down to business making up the year of work that she had missed.

If Ron wanted to renew their relationship (and part of her really hoped that he would, despite how angry she was at him), he would simply have to learn to accept her decisions.


	4. Minerva McGonagall

Minerva McGonagall lifted her face from the sink and patted it dry. She loved the feeling of being freshly washed, before the grime of the old castle began to resettle on her skin and robes, filter into her hair. She picked up the silver brush and began to run it through her long locks. With practiced ease, she began to arrange it all high on her head. The sleeves of her dressing gown fell down around her arms, but her movements never slowed. A twist here, a pin there, and before long her soft hair was perfectly pinned up. She nodded at her reflection in the looking glass with satisfaction.

Today was the first day of the special summer session. There were more students than usual this year due to the chaos of the past school year. Many students had been pulled from school during the year by scared or outraged parents. Three had spent the year traveling around the countryside trying to ensure victory in the war. Now that Voldemort had been defeated, his minions captured or disappeared, many of the students were back for the summer session to make up missed work.

Minerva walked back to her bedroom and retrieved the heavy headmistress robes that she had laid out for herself. The students had arrived last night, so classes were starting today. Minerva wanted to be at breakfast to ensure that the day got off to a good start. This would be an unusual session, but she was determined to do all that she could to ensure that it felt as safe and normal as possible for the students who had come.

The castle was still being restored from the damage incurred during the battle and some of the teachers had been lost, but education must continue. That's what the friends and colleagues who had given their lives would have wanted, after all, and Minerva intended to do everything she could to ensure things went as smoothly as possible. The students deserved as safe and stable an experience as she and her remaining staff could give them.

Squaring her shoulders and twitching the folds of her robes, she headed down to breakfast in the Great Hall to greet her students on their first day of classes.


	5. George Weasley

George Weasley was wide awake. He had dozed fitfully for part of the night, but now he was much too awake even for that. He rolled over to face the window.

The sky was just barely lighter than before in that way it was every day before dawn. George sat up stiffly and ruffled his hair. They said it would get easier and he knew that was probably true, but right now it felt like someone had cut out half of his heart.

Standing slowly, he made his way over to the window. He looked out at the city street below. Over a year ago, he and Fred had bought the top floor of a fancy flat building in a fashionable wizard neighborhood in London that was located near Diagon Alley. They had turned the floor into two large, mirrored flats connected to an open, comfortable entertaining common space in between. It was a great place, but it didn't really feel like home to George anymore.

Nobody was out and about in the street outside their building this early in the morning. The quiet city street gave no indication that it would be busy in just a few hours. George considered the view. Did he feel up to going out there today? He hadn't left the flat in days. He knew that he should check on the store at some point, but the very idea of setting foot in there without Fred was physically painful.

George returned to his bed, trying to keep from crying. Who knew a single wizard could cry so much? George had barely cried before in his life at all, but in the past few weeks he had cried enough for a lifetime. And yet it didn't seem likely that he would stop any time soon.

He couldn't face the rest of the world yet. Maybe later in the day he would be up to visiting his mother, but for now he didn't even feel up to standing any longer. He missed his brother so much.


	6. Molly Weasley

As usual, Molly was up before any of the rest of her family. She slipped quietly out of her bed, leaving Arthur entirely undisturbed. The house was as quiet this early in the morning as when Arthur and the children were all away. Usually, Molly enjoyed that quiet. It had been a rare occurrence at the Barrow for it to be that quiet for a very long time and Molly had long since come to treasure it when it happened.

These days, however, there was a particular facet of the peaceful quiet that seemed to cut like a knife straight to her heart. This morning peace would never again be broken by her son's riotous laughter or by the noise from some prank or experiment he was testing out. Someday hopefully George would take up these things again, but Fred never would. And Molly suspected that it would be a very long time indeed before George was that carefree again.

She knew that she should get dressed and start breakfast, but Molly couldn't seem to pull herself together. The area outside the window was where her children played growing up. She could almost see him there playing pranks on his older brothers and laughing riotously with his twin, convincing his younger brother to try things he had no business doing and then catching him moments before he got hurt, or sitting on the ground with his sister telling her jokes and showing her little tricks until she forgot about the pain of a skinned knee.

Molly sank into the rocking chair next to the window. The chair was where she had rocked each of her children when they were little and it felt comforting, but it also brought up memories of when Fred was that small. Her head dropped into her hands as tears began to pour down her cheeks. The silence surrounded her, burning her skin with the pain of never hearing his laugh again, never seeing where his life would have led. She would never meet the children that she had always imagined him having one day.

Molly had no idea when Arthur had woken up, so lost in her sorrow was she, but when he put his arms around her she gratefully leaned into him and let her tears flow freely.


	7. The Gray Lady

The wind howled through the gaping hole in the exterior wall of the corridor. The area was blocked off until it could be repaired, but no physical barrier could keep out a ghost.

The Gray Lady sat in the air above the pile of rubble that used to be one of the school's exterior walls and gazed outward. The opening afforded her a lovely view of the sun, which was just beginning to poke it's head over the curve of the Earth, it's pink cloak spreading out behind it becomingly. Helena had always loved sunrise. It was a beautiful and peaceful time of day. Every sunrise was a chance at a new beginning.

It felt like Hogwarts, and perhaps the rest of the Wizarding World as well, needed a fresh start. Even the ghosts were haunted by the events of the battle with Voldemort. Helena herself definitely wanted a fresh start.

She was torn. Telling Harry Potter about the diadem had helped lead to Voldemort's destruction, but if she hadn't told Tom Riddle about it in the first place then her mother's crown of wisdom would never have been twisted into something dark to begin with. She felt responsible for at least part of the horror that had followed. She felt unworthy of being the ghost for her mother's house, unworthy of being a representative of the Ravenclaws.

As the light of dawn began to make the stones around her seem to glow, Helena wondered how she could move on. She found herself longing to see her mother again in a way that she had not in centuries. Now the battle was over, the diadem found and destroyed, so what was she missing? Shouldn't a daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw be able to figure it out? What was left for her to do?

If she had still been alive, tears would have streamed down her face, but being a ghost denied her even that small comfort. With a heart-wrenching sigh, the Gray Lady floated off of the broken wall and glided away into the castle. She hoped that someday she would figure it out and find peace, but it was unlikely to be today.


End file.
